Remembering my dad telling me it was possible to shift up gears without a clutch from his early (1930's) driving experience I gave it a try from fourth to fifth. Where I usually pull in the clutch, I just rolled off the throttle a little and pressed up on the selector and 'snick' in to 5th no problem and no clutch. I have tried 3rd to 4th also at moderate speeds - that's a little tougher to get but it can work. Am I damaging anything by going up gears 3rd to 4th to 5th in this way? Interested to hear from the panel...
like you I do this on occasions, I understand there's no harm in doing this method.
Now clutchless downshifting, I still don't have the knack for that..
I do that from time to time, sometime because I'm lazy and sometime for fun. Sometime when in a hurry merge with traffic i'll run up to 5 to 6000 RPM and do it really quick for fun in all gears. It actually works just as well or better at higher RPM's. That's the way air shifts work on drag bikes, the ignition is momentarily (very quickly) killed the instant the shift lever is pushed to the next gear. With up shifts the RPM's have to drop slightly and remove the load on the drive train. Down shifts, as @BonnieJon says requires more coordination and more likely to damage something. I'v never done it enough to get good at it.
I rarely use the clutch to upshift past 1st-2nd on any of the bike I've ever owned. Several of which I have put 25k plus miles on before selling/trading them, 1 of which went 65k on the original clutch before an idiot driver totaled it.
You will only damage the gears if you miss the shift and it grinds, so be ready with the clutch lever.
I do clutchless up shifts on all my bikes, all the time - sometimes using the clutch if I'm not feeling it - 40K on the bonnie, 80K on the 1100G only 7K on the FZ09.
Sometimes I do the 1-2 shift clutchless too, but more often than not I do use the clutch for that one.
I plan to use this technique from second gear upwards. Less wear and tear on the clutch cable also
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